


The Lost Our

by oddmonster



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddmonster/pseuds/oddmonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Due to circumstances entirely Eerie, this particular Marshall's growing old and Dash X isn't. And it all has to do with The Lost Hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lost Our

**Author's Note:**

> Follows on from episode: "The Lost Hour".
> 
> Please note: in this fic, Marshall's 108.5 years old and Dash isn't. It's very G-rated, but if that situation will upset you, please don't read. (Thank you to der_tanzer for the beta!)

Eerie, Indiana was a ghost town.

Gentle spring breezes rolled down its suburban avenues, rustling the newly green leaves in the trees and stirring the bright plastic handles of the garbage bags that sat outside every house in town, lining the streets like so many dark clouds sodden and fallen to earth. No dogs barked, no basketballs thumped along the sidewalks, no human voices woke the stillness.

But with a disgruntled rumble of ancient gears, the blue-and-white Eerie Dairy truck slowed for a stop sign at the corner of State and Main, coming to a complete stop before lurching forward, indicator winking lazily.

Marshall Teller, aged 108-and-a-half, hunched over the wheel, peering through the windscreen. He muttered to himself as he drove, eyebrows rising and falling as if in thrall to an unknown tide. From time to time he glanced at the three watches on his wrist. His starched white uniform was buttoned to his throat.

On the other side of town, men in dark glasses and jumpsuits collected the dark clouds on the pavements, cleaning. Anything that shouldn’t belong, after they passed, didn’t.

“Everybody’s right here,” Marshall muttered, “except not exactly right now.” He carefully guided the milk truck around a tricycle left in the middle of State Street. “Transported to an alternate dimension. Cosmic landfill.” His eyes swept both sides of the street, right and left, right and left. Whatever should be,” he muttered. “Whatever should be. Ah!”

The milk truck slowed, indicating right before turning left on Highway 13, headed away from town, following the long slow curve of the Lethe River.

He felt the presence of the Removers like an angry mosquito bite, begging to be scratched, but entirely inadequate in the presence of the larger and more compelling need that drove him towards the old mill. _Like chalk and cheese_ , Marshall told himself, guiding the milk truck into a gravel turnout. _Like oil and water._ He snuck another glance at his watches and slowed to a stop, putting the truck in park and adding the hand-brake for extra measure.

Outside, the inhuman stillness of a too-perfect spring day beckoned.

Marshall climbed carefully down from the driver’s seat and, stretching, regarded the Hitchcock Mill with something akin to fondness. It perched on the edge of the river like it had been somehow frozen in the act of falling in: a ramshackle wooden barn-like structure, the water-wheel long dried up, sun-weathered boards covering the windows and door, dust falling lazily through the sun. “Close,” Marshall said, with a glance at his watch. “Very close.” Then he turned and headed for the back of the van, pausing a moment on the threshold, steadying himself, pleading for the magic to hold, one more time.

Then, with a quavering hand, he reached for the door handles. With a shriek of tortured metal they gave, and Marshall threw the doors open wide.

Crouched among the crates of milk bottles, a familiar figure stirred, turning his head toward the sudden sunlight.

“Took you long enough,” Dash rasped. “So if you’re coming in, come in. We don’t have all day.”

And that, Marshall reasoned, was the understatement of the century. He stepped up into the milk truck’s cool interior, pulling the doors closed behind him.

***

Eerie, Indiana. Population 16,661, year after year after year. In 2006, when the rest of Indiana decided to finally recognize Daylight Savings Time, the message was somehow lost on its way from Indianapolis to Eerie, and Marshall lives in fear of the day that particular law gets enforced. All he knows is this: on the last Sunday of every March, an extra hour appears, bubbling up to the surface of reality. If you don’t set your watch forward, you find yourself in Eerie’s version of the Twilight Zone, free to roam the forgotten streets for sixty blissful, uninterrupted minutes. At the end of the hour, if you set your watch back to the correct time and are in exactly the same spot you were when you left, you drop back into the real world with a reassuring thump.

If you didn’t know the rules you could get trapped, like Janet Donner, who once spent a whole year in the bubble, or Bobby Briggs, who’d figured out how to flee a tumultuous home life for the bubble’s peace and quiet, then headed off into the forest, ignoring all Marshall’s well-meaning advice. The handful of folks who’ve found themselves on the wrong side of Daylight Savings Time have all gone home, sooner or later.

Except...

It doesn’t seem to work quite like that for him and Dash.

Then again, what has?

***

Dash’s eyes were large, dark and weary, but other than that, he looked exactly the same as the last time Marshall saw him. And the time before that, and the one before that, too. Dash X was and apparently forever would be, thirteen years old. Marshall on the other hand, would not.

He sank down next to Dash with some difficulty, joints creaking as he slid the last few inches down the wall to sit on the floor. Their shoulders pressed together and this close, Marshall could smell Dash, sawdust and popcorn and sweat. He breathed in deep. “Nice weather we’re having.”

Dash snorted. “That’s all you got, old man?”

Marshall threw his gnarled hands up in despair. “Fine. I’ve missed you. How’s being immortally weird and smart-assed going?”

“I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not weird. Consider me...misplaced. Sooner or later I’ll figure this all out.”

“And I’ll find Bigfoot a prom date,” Marshall countered.

“I keep telling you, him and Mr. Chaney: they’re made for one another. What could possibly go wrong?”

Marshall made a wordless noise that encompassed all the things that have already gone wrong with that idea for Dash to suggest it. They sat in companionable silence for a few moments while the milk truck’s engine ticked quietly in the sunshine. “Is it worth another shot?” Marshall asked quietly. “D’you wanna try and stay again?”

“If you’d like,” Dash answered.

“Maybe this time will be different.”

“Maybe. But maybe we gotta face up to the fact that whatever makes Eerie different, doesn’t work on me. I’m a different kind of different.”

“So? Look at me. I’ll be 107 come September and fifteen at the same time. See, in Eerie, time--”

“Works like a Moebius Strip. Yeah yeah, save it, Marshall. You say the same thing every year. And look at us! Another year’s gone by and we’re still--” He gestured. “Nothing changes, Marshall. Not in Eerie. And whatever I am, in approximately forty more minutes, I’ll keep being it somewhere else.”

Marshall stayed quiet. They had the same conversation every year. It didn’t get any easier.

“I wish I’d never come to Eerie,” Dash growled.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yeah I do. Stupid place with its stupid mill and stupid people and stupid broken time-space continuum. I hate it here! Wherever I was before here, I wish I’d just stayed there.”

“But if you had,” Marshall pointed out calmly, “we never would’ve met.”

Dash opened his mouth to respond then closed it again and shook his head. They sat in a longer silence then, a silence nearly as great as the one outside in Eerie.

Finally, Dash turned to Marshall, eyes shining with tears. “I’ve missed you too,” he said.

Marshall said nothing, but moved closer and took Dash’s hand, and held it between his own.

***

“Same time next year,” Marshall whispers, bowing over the steering wheel, blinking away the tears. He can’t bear to look in the back of the milk truck now, and will spend the next year avoiding it like the plague, knowing he’ll find only empty crates and bottles. Cold, lifeless things now that Dash has gone.

He can no longer remember how long he’s been driving this route, or what he did before he started. All he knows is this: somewhere in Eerie lives another Marshall Teller, and another Dash. For all he knows, the universe is full of the two of them, different times and different places. But his Dash only exists for the duration of a solitary hour each year. Not one minute more or less. And the rest of the time...Marshall wipes his eyes stubbornly. He tries not to speculate about the rest of the time. The hour is enough. It has to be enough.

The Removers’ garbage truck rattles along the road next to the river, and the man hanging off the back stares at Marshall through his mirrored sunglasses as they pass. Marshall waits until the Removers disappear into the overhanging eucalyptus before turning the key in the milk truck’s ignition.


End file.
